America’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 1.9 percent in 2023, largely because burning coal to generate electricity fell to its lowest level in half a century. according to estimates published Wednesday by the Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan research firm.
The drop means United States emissions are now down about 17.2 percent since 2005. There was a huge, anomalous drop in global warming pollution at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when large parts of the economy shut down, followed by from a sharp recovery in the next two years, once activity resumes. But over the long term, America’s emissions have been trending downward as power plants and cars have gotten cleaner.
However, the reduction in emissions to date has not been steep enough to meet the country’s targets for trying to slow global warming. President Biden wants to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. To reach that goal, annual emissions would have to fall more than three times as fast for rest of the decade than last year, the report found.
The researchers looked at global warming emissions from transportation, electricity, industry and buildings, but did not include pollution from agriculture, which accounts for about 10 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gases.
To accelerate action on climate change, Congress in 2022 approved a record federal amount for low-emission technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear reactors, electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel.
But the full impact of these investments on emissions is yet to be seen, as many companies are just beginning to ramp up investments in clean energy.
“In the coming years, we would expect to start seeing increases in renewable energy deployment and increases in the number of electric vehicles on the road,” said Ben King, associate director at Rhodium Group and author of the new report. “The big question is how quickly emissions will fall as a result.”
The main reason emissions fell last year was that carbon dioxide pollution from America’s power plant fleet fell by about 8 percent. Electric utilities shut down more than a dozen large power plants that burned coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, replacing it with cheaper natural gas, lower-emitting wind and solar power.
This is a trend that has started since the fracking boom of the mid-2000s made natural gas abundant and relatively cheap. While coal plants once generated nearly half of America’s electricity, they generated just 17 percent last year, a lower share than either nuclear or renewables, the report said. Coal use for electricity fell to lowest level since 1969.
In contrast, the use of natural gas for electricity soared to record highs as a series of summer heat waves prompted utilities to run their natural gas plants more often to meet high demand for air conditioning. Renewable electricity generation grew by a smaller amount: While the solar industry enjoyed a record year for installations, wind companies erected significantly fewer new turbines than they did in 2022.
Transportation, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases, saw a 1.6 percent increase in emissions in 2023. Gasoline and jet fuel consumption increased as Americans continued to drive and fly more after the pandemic. Electric vehicle sales in the US surpass the one million mark in 2023but they still make up a relatively small fraction of vehicles on the road and have yet to make a significant dent in emissions.
Emissions from the industrial sector rose roughly 1.2 percent last year, partly due to methane leaks from drilling operations. The United States produced record amounts of oil and natural gas in 2023, and some of the excess gas not sold for fuel was either leaked or intentionally vented into the atmosphere as methane. Methane only stays in the atmosphere for about a decade before decaying, but it is about 80 times more powerful in the short term at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
The Biden administration has made reducing methane emissions a top priority. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a regulation that would, for the first time, require oil and gas producers to detect and fix methane leaks from hundreds of thousands of existing wells. And on Friday the Ministry of Energy announced a $189 million conditional loan guarantee at LongPath Technologies, which plans to mount lasers on giant towers to monitor methane leaks in oil and gas fields across the country.
The United States is one of 26 countries around the world that have seen emissions decline in recent years, even as they enjoy significant economic growth, found a study last year. This list also includes Brazil, Britain, Japan, much of the European Union and South Africa.
But globally, carbon dioxide emissions still rose to record levels last year, driven by increased fossil fuel use in China, India and other fast-growing countries.